Max Tegmark Suggests the Term ‘Homo Sentiens’ to Account for Our Extra Specialness

The well-known physicist and AI expert Max Tegmark once wrote the following: “As we prepare to be humbled by ever smarter machines, I suggest that we rebrand ourselves as Homo sentiens!” Is this yet another attempt to place human beings at the top of the universal pile?

I came across a passage written by the Swedish-American cosmologist, physicist and machine learning researcher Max Tegmark in which he seems to be at pains to find abilities (or general characteristics) which truly distinguish human beings from all other… things in the Universe. Alternatively, Tegmark is simply expressing the general mindset of what he calls “we humans”.

This is the passage in full:

“Philosophers like to go Latin on this distinction, by contrasting sapience (the ability to think intelligently) with sentience (the ability to subjectively experience qualia). We humans have built our identity on being Homo sapiens, the smartest entities around. As we prepare to be humbled by ever smarter machines, I suggest that we rebrand ourselves as Homo…